On the feasibility of cloud stereoscopy and wind determination with the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer

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Abstract
The Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) is a planned ERS-1 payload for accurate sea-surface temperature measurements under two different incidence angles from a conical scan. It is investigated whether it can additionally be used for cloud stereoscopy and wind determinations as proposed by DFVLR for the Stereo Line Scanner (SLS). Although not designed for these types of measurements the ATSR seems very useful for a pilot experiment with only a lower resolution than proposed for the SLS. Because of distortions that occur with the conical scan of the ATSR, synthetic stereo imaging with additional height corrections is recommended instead of direct stereoscopy. Quantitative cloud heights can be derived from parallax measurements. Estimations of the influence of the pixel size and the alignment changes lead to cloud-height accuracies of up to ±750m. The influence of cloud motion on the parallax may be corrected with cloud-motion vectors derived from geosynchronous satellite data. An experiment for wind determinations from ATSR data is proposed in the vicinity of radiosonde stations which would lead to a resolution of up to about ± 8m/s. The necessary independent height informations for that are derived from ATSR infrared (IR) cloud temperatures and radiosonde temperature profiles (accuracy ±400m). Since all uncertainties were estimated rather too high than too low an increase in the accuracy may be expected for all results.

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